IF MORALITY IS INDEPENDENT OF WHAT WE THINK THEN WE ARE THE COLLABORATORS OF MERCY NOT THE MAKERS
SYNOPSIS: What we are going to learn here is that no God or no person can own forgiving or forgiveness. No God or person can take credit/thanks for being forgiving and for pardoning but can only say that they recognise a principle that is not them and are TRYING to be in line with it. TRYING. A principle about what you must do is an abstract thing. It is not part of any God or any person. You being one person does not mean that the number 1 is you. Same idea.
THE ARGUMENT:
A principle is an abstract thing like a number and we have to go along with it. It is not about us. It is not there for us. But for our sake we need to live it. What happens is you feel that in principle a person should be forgiven or forgiveness accepted. So you try to co-operate with the principle but all you do is try. The principle "owns", as it were. You do not. Religion is based on the lie that forgiveness is owned by God and us. If anything should be rewarded for it, it should be the principle.
A humble person admits that they forgive and will be good to the person and will say that they do it not for they own forgiveness but for they have reason to think a principle of mercy applies here. They will not acclaim a God who tries to own forgiveness. They will not worship a thief. They will not pray for their enemy to virtue-signal how forgiveness belongs to them and now they can patronise the enemy by lavishing it on them.
Forgiveness can be explained as ceasing to identify a person who has hurt you, with their sin or wrongdoing. You see them as something else now instead of the offender. They are now somebody to be good to even if they remain an enemy.
The argument that you need to forgive otherwise you only upset
yourself by not letting go is blackmail. Real forgiving would
not be forced by the threat of further pain unless it is done.
It will not work. You may think it does until you explode one
day at the person who hurt you. Those who make the argument
will look the other way with a smug gaze.
Religion says that:
"Love, as in treating a person right, and justice go together and this sums up morality. Forgiveness is necessary for morality. Morality cannot work unless forgiving happens and is commanded."
Commanded then not merely advised. The inevitable danger with advising forgiveness or saying it is just each person's opinion whether to forgive is that it says it is okay if nobody forgives. As somebody said that an eye for an eye leaves us all blinded. That is a threat. The contradiction here is that you cannot command or pressure or influence anybody to forgive and it should be a spontaneous gift. Forgiveness is not the rational moral thing it is made out to be. As it is incoherent, it is no wonder the merciful cause so much trouble.
Forgiveness is about pragmatism not morality. Let us not dwell on that.
Anyway we are going to assume that forgiveness is needed to help morality function or mean anything.
We are going to assume that forgiving is based on principle, moral principle (it
is not).
So let us take a look at morality right now.
If morality is a standard independent of God then he like the rest of us hopes
he knows it. He cannot be completely sure for he is not it. It is because we
cannot turn into mathematical principles to know them from the inside as it
were, that we make errors. It is because principle is not us and is hard for us
to verify that we have some doubt and always have to check ourselves.
Principle says you should forgive. But knowing is the problem. Is your forgiving
them objectively moral or not? You cannot know that. Is the timing of your
forgiving objectively the right time morally? Are your reasons in this case,
every case is different, objectively all the right reasons? As forgiveness has
to be kept up should we take it back in time?
When you forgive you hope it is in principle right. It is the same with God when
he pardons.
If you say you are sure you are right when you are not you are lying. Even if by
chance you are right and you line up perfectly to the principle of forgiving, you are still
the kind of person who would lie. It is luck that makes you right not your
honesty for you lack it. So if you think you are certain you should forgive then
you are lying. A God who knows he is doing the right thing in forgiving is
incoherent.
If you are only capable of having the opinion that you should forgive and are
acting on that then that is very weak indeed. If the forgiveness lasts or does
much, it is a wonder. Is it really forgiveness? Are you just condoning or
mistaking the feeling that it does not matter now for forgiveness? Feeling you
forgive us not the same as forgiveness. Feeling is shallow.
Conclusions:
A forgiving God is incoherent for forgiveness is incoherent. It should be free and generous and not forced but if we are told that the alternative is an eye for an eye we are being forced and we are agreeing with that lex talonis being used to force. God adds to an already existing problem for now we have something reinforcing a force that is already reinforced. He supposedly stands for and administers morality.
God cannot own forgiveness for if moral principle is independent of him
forgiveness is independent of him. Like the rest of us, he has no
authority to wipe away a person's responsibility for evil. He can only be
praised for trying to affirm the person as no longer a sinner but that is all.
The principle if they should be is what is important.
